Mary Wollstonecraft First published Wed Apr 16, 2008; substantive revision Tue Sep 17, 2013 Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was a moral and political theorist whose analysis of the condition of women in modern society retains much of its original radicalism. One of the reasons her pronouncements on the subject remain challenging is that her reflections on the status of the female sex were part of an attempt to come to a comprehensive understanding of human relations within a civilization increasingly governed by acquisitiveness. Her first publication was on the education of daughters; she went on to write about politics, history and various aspects of philosophy in a number of different genres that included critical reviews, translations, pamphlets, and novels. 1. The second of seven children, Mary Wollstonecraft was born in Spitalfields, London, on 27 April 1759, in a house in Primrose Street. In 1778, she was engaged as a companion to a Mrs Dawson and lived at Bath. Wollstonecraft had a girl by Imlay.
Frankenstein Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, is a novel written by English author Mary Shelley about eccentric scientist Victor Frankenstein, who creates a grotesque creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment. Shelley started writing the story when she was eighteen, and the novel was published when she was twenty. The first edition was published anonymously in London in 1818. Shelley's name appears on the second edition, published in France in 1823. Shelley had travelled through Europe in 1814, journeying along the river Rhine in Germany with a stop in Gernsheim which is just 17 km (10 mi) away from Frankenstein Castle, where two centuries before an alchemist was engaged in experiments.[1][2][3] Later, she traveled in the region of Geneva (Switzerland)—where much of the story takes place—and the topics of galvanism and other similar occult ideas were themes of conversation among her companions, particularly her lover and future husband, Percy Shelley. Summary[edit] Composition[edit]
Ada Lovelace: Founder of Scientific Computing Born: London, England, December 10, 1815 Died: London, England, November 27, 1852 Ada Byron was the daughter of a brief marriage between the Romantic poet Lord Byron and Anne Isabelle Milbanke, who separated from Byron just a month after Ada was born. Lady Byron wished her daughter to be unlike her poetical father, and she saw to it that Ada received tutoring in mathematics and music, as disciplines to counter dangerous poetic tendencies. Lady Byron and Ada moved in an elite London society, one in which gentlemen not members of the clergy or occupied with politics or the affairs of a regiment were quite likely to spend their time and fortunes pursuing botany, geology, or astronomy. One of the gentlemanly scientists of the era was to become Ada's lifelong friend. In 1835, Ada married William King, ten years her senior, and when King inherited a noble title in 1838, they became the Earl and Countess of Lovelace.
CARMILLA by J. Sheridan LeFanu An Early Fright In Styria, we, though by no means magnificent people, inhabit a castle, or schloss. A small income, in that part of the world, goes a great way. Eight or nine hundred a year does wonders. Scantily enough ours would have answered among wealthy people at home. My father is English, and I bear an English name, although I never saw England. My father was in the Austrian service, and retired upon a pension and his patrimony, and purchased this feudal residence, and the small estate on which it stands, a bargain. Nothing can be more picturesque or solitary. Over all this the schloss shows its many-windowed front; its towers, and its Gothic chapel. The forest opens in an irregular and very picturesque glade before its gate, and at the right a steep Gothic bridge carries the road over a stream that winds in deep shadow through the wood. Respecting the cause of the desertion of this striking and melancholy spot, there is a legend which I shall relate to you another time. A Guest
Mary Wollstonecraft Mary Wollstonecraft (/ˈwʊlstən.krɑːft/; 27 April 1759 – 10 September 1797) was an eighteenth-century English writer, philosopher, and advocate of women's rights. During her brief career, she wrote novels, treatises, a travel narrative, a history of the French Revolution, a conduct book, and a children's book. Wollstonecraft is best known for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), in which she argues that women are not naturally inferior to men, but appear to be only because they lack education. Until the late 20th century, Wollstonecraft's life, which encompassed several unconventional personal relationships, received more attention than her writing. After Wollstonecraft's death, her widower published a Memoir (1798) of her life, revealing her unorthodox lifestyle, which inadvertently destroyed her reputation for almost a century. Biography Early life Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London. Two friendships shaped Wollstonecraft's early life.
Bram Stoker's Dracula Bram Stoker's Dracula is a 1992 American horror fantasy erotic drama film directed and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker.[3][4][5] It stars Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, Winona Ryder as Mina Harker, Anthony Hopkins as Professor Abraham Van Helsing, and Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker. Bram Stoker's Dracula was greeted by a generally positive critical reception and was a box office hit, although Reeves' performance has been widely criticised. Its score was composed by Wojciech Kilar and featured "Love Song for a Vampire" by Annie Lennox, which became an international hit, as the closing credits theme. Plot[edit] In 1462, Vlad Dracula, a member of the Order of the Dragon, returns from a victory against the Turks to find his wife, Elisabeta, has committed suicide after receiving a false report of his death. In 1897, newly qualified solicitor Jonathan Harker takes the Transylvanian Count Dracula as a client from his colleague R. Cast[edit] [edit]
Ada Lovelace Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (10 December 1815 – 27 November 1852), born Augusta Ada Byron and now commonly known as Ada Lovelace, was an English mathematician and writer chiefly known for her work on Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the Analytical Engine. Her notes on the engine include what is recognised as the first algorithm intended to be carried out by a machine. Because of this, she is often described as the world's first computer programmer.[1][2][3] Ada described her approach as "poetical science" and herself as an "Analyst (& Metaphysician)". As a young adult, her mathematical talents led her to an ongoing working relationship and friendship with fellow British mathematician Charles Babbage, and in particular Babbage's work on the Analytical Engine. Biography[edit] Childhood[edit] Ada, aged four On 16 January 1816, Annabella, at George's behest, left for her parents' home at Kirkby Mallory taking one-month-old Ada with her. Adult years[edit]
Gothic Literature Lord Byron He travelled all over Europe especially in Italy where he lived for seven years and then joined the Greek War of Independence fighting the Ottoman Empire, for which Greeks revere him as a national hero.[1] He died one year later at age 36 from a fever contracted while in Missolonghi in Greece. Often described as the most flamboyant and notorious of the major Romantics, Byron was celebrated in life for aristocratic excesses, including huge debts, numerous love affairs with both sexes, rumours of a scandalous incestuous liaison with his half-sister, and self-imposed exile.[2] Early life[edit] Byron's paternal grandparents were Vice-Admiral the Hon. He was christened, at St Marylebone Parish Church, "George Gordon Byron" after his maternal grandfather George Gordon of Gight, a descendant of James I of Scotland, who had committed suicide[2] in 1779. Catherine Gordon, Byron's mother Upon the death of Byron's mother-in-law Judith Noel, the Hon. Education and early loves[edit] Ah! Career[edit]
VAN HELSING - 2004 Mary Wollstonecraft, 1759-1797 The Anglo-Irish feminist, intellectual and writer, Mary Wollstonecraft, was born in London, the second of six children. Her father, Edward John Wollstonecraft, was a family despot who bullied his wife, Elizabeth Dixon, into a state of wearied servitude. He spent a fortune which he had inherited in various unsuccessful ventures at farming which took the family to six different locales throughout Britain by 1780, the year Mary's mother died. At the age of nineteen Mary went out to earn her own livelihood. In 1783, she helped her sister Eliza escape a miserable marriage by hiding her from a brutal husband until a legal separation was arranged. The two sisters established a school at Newington Green, an experience from which Mary drew to write Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: With Reflections on Female Conduct, in the More Important Duties of Life (1787). In 1788 she became translator and literary advisor to Joseph Johnson, the publisher of radical texts. | Return to the Lecture |